Explaining International Variations in Self-Employment: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries

By Simon C. Parker, Martin T. Robson. 2004

258 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data from 1972 to 1996 reveals substantial differences in the levels and trends of self-employment rates across countries. This article uses recently developed panel integration and cointegration techniques to explore the determinants of aggregate self-employment rates. We find that within the panel, self-employment rates are positively and significantly related to personal income tax rates and negatively and significantly related to the unemployment benefit replacement rate. This accords a central role to government tax and transfer policies, in contrast to nonrobust influences from macroeconomic variables, which have been widely used in previous studies.

Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a4c53150356cd7b5b7d0320dc5796580a5f47691

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Citations in the corpus

Drivers of entrepreneurial aspirations at the country level: the role of start-up motivations and social security (2007, background): “…security arrangements, a factor that has been found to affect the supply of entrepreneurship at the country level in recent empirical contributions (Hessels et al. 2007; Wennekers et al. 2002; Parker and Robson 2004), also affects the level of aspirations that entrepreneurs have with their firm.”
Ageing and entrepreneurial preferences (2013, unknown): “Moreover, prior research suggests that higher unemployment benefits (Parker and Robson 2004; Staber and Bögenhold 1993) and access to pensions (Fuchs 1982; Zissimopoulos and Karoly 2007) discourage self-employment compared to waged employment.”
Gender and field of study as determinants of self-employment (2010, background): “As international studies show, there is a considerable degree of variation in SE across countries ( Parker and Robson 2004; Torrini 2005).”
Recent developments in the economics of entrepreneurship (2008, background): “For example, substantial differences have been shown to exist in self-employment rates across countries (Parker and Robson, 2004) and as a function of the age distribution of the population (Lévesque and Minniti, 2007).”
Institutions, Latent Entrepreneurship, and Self–Employment: An International Comparison (2012, background): “For example, Parker and Robson (2004) find that from 1972 to 1996 the rate of selfemployment grew in six Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, remained static in three, and fell in three.”
Self‐employment among people with disabilities: evidence for Europe (2009, background): “Nevertheless, this cross‐country variability also depends on institutional factors that affect the worker’s choice between self‐employment and paid employment, taxation systems, labour and product market regulations, unemployment benefits and size of the public sector (see, for example, Robson and W”
Nascent entrepreneurship and the level of economic development (2005, background): “For a selection of 12 OECD countries spanning the period 1972–1996, Parker and Robson (2004) find a significantly positive effect of personal income tax rates on selfemployment.”
The dynamics of entrepreneurship: hysteresis, business cycles and government policy (2011, background): “fairly high degree of temporal stability ( Parker and Robson, 2004 ).”
Uncertainty avoidance and the rate of business ownership across 21 OECD countries, 1976–2004 (2006, background): “(unemployment replacement rate) Parker and Robson 2004 1972, 1986, 2000; OECD Benefits and”
Individual Determinants of Self-Employment Entry – What Do We Really Know? (2013, unknown): “…as central result that women have a lower propensity to enter into self-employment than do men (e.g., Blanchflower, 2000; Wang and Wong, 2004; Parker and Robson, 2004; Moog and Backes-Gellner, 2009; Leoni and Falk, 2010; Tervo and Haapanen, 2010; Baumann and Brändle, 2012; Stefanovi and…”
The Economics of Entrepreneurship: What We Know and What We Don't (2005, methodology): “Parker and Robson [119] have used so-called “panel data cointegration estimators” to isolate the factors that explain the substantial variations in selfemployment rates across OECD countries.”